


The Bowl of Darkness

by MissEllaVation



Category: U2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 03:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11153469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissEllaVation/pseuds/MissEllaVation
Summary: At a big venue somewhere in North America, Bono observes Edge and reminisces. The title sounds dark; the story isn't.





	The Bowl of Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> I’m posting this exactly one week after flying to Chicago, where I met up with some wonderful, beautiful people, and where I screamed and cried and witnessed U2 doing that glorious thing they do. That is, playing a gig. Not the stuff they do here on AO3. You can’t actually get tickets for that. :(
> 
> This sort of takes place in the present, but most of it is a big flashback, because why bother with structure? This isn’t writing school, and WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WANT! This is also my second attempt at a Bono POV. Feels… weird. Feels _weird_ rummaging around inside his head!
> 
> I actually feel a bit protective of B and E right now, because I was very close to them last Saturday, and I felt seen and even loved by them in a weird metaphysical—and possibly imaginary—way. So this is just pretty fluff. I just want them to be together and happy, okay? 
> 
> The cruise down the Thames is based on one that I took, and if you’re ever in London, you should take one too!
> 
> Thanks to all who read. And thanks to likeamadonna, spacemonkey, and fouroux for that time they chloroformed me, tied me up, drove me to an abandoned shack at the edge of a Jersey swamp, and said, “oh, you’re _gonna_ write the Bedge.” 
> 
> This is a work of fiction, obviously.

_On tour, North America, any year. Night._

To answer your question, no Love, I’m not afraid at all. This is what we’re meant to do. This is our truth. This is our one truth. What else could we possibly do, if not all of this? What else could be as satisfying, as challenging, as joyful, as magnificent? 

These last few nights, when I finally close my eyes, the first thing I see is the layer of smoke that hangs over every show. Some of it comes from our smoke machines, which, being adults, we use sparingly. Some of it comes from whatever the audience is partaking of. The two columns of smoke rise toward the ceiling, or toward the night sky, twisting themselves into the shape of wrestling angels. Two angels wrestling, following me everywhere. Following all of us. Life and death. 

So far, life keeps winning. Life really wants to win. And this is a pretty good way for life to win, don’t you think? I mean, this thing we do together. 

All the things we do together.

But to be honest, of _course_ I’m afraid. 

My laundry list of fears:  
my voice will die;  
I will forget everything I ever knew and just stand there staring;  
I will faint or fall or trip on my own heels (that last one the most likely);  
the people will get bored;  
the people will boo;  
the people will riot;  
the people will simply turn their backs and walk out.  
I will open my chest and tear my heart out to keep them here with us.

Every arena, every stadium is made the same way, like an ancient amphitheater, like a deep, dark bowl in the night. And you and I stand together at the bottom of every bowl of darkness, under the circle of night sky.

The first thing I look for, even before I check out the crowd, is the light touching your face. Not ordinary daylight, not even moonlight, but _our_ light—the artificial light that looms up out of the floor or spills down onto us from the rigging. Your face lit up red or blue or bright white. The white light is harsh and punishing on everyone’s face but yours. Your face holds up under any kind of scrutiny. It changes over time but is never diminished. Sometimes I’m jealous. Mostly I’m in awe. And in love. Always in love.

My grasp of recent world events is pretty good. My acquaintance with ancient history? Eh, not so much. But I can recall in great detail an illustration from my Encyclopaedia Britannica of a Tatar chieftain riding across the Mongolian Plain. The Tatar wears a fur hat. His horse is sturdy, and he sits tall and straight in the saddle. He is bearded like Fu Manchu, and his almond eyes are almost obscured by his high, jutting cheekbones. This is you in another lifetime. Completely. Some kind of ancient king. A fair-minded, egalitarian potentate.

I see you rolling your own almond eyes at me, The Edge. You have so much to put up with, don’t you. All my flights of fancy. Be glad I haven’t introduced you to the audience as an ancient Tatar chieftain! …Yet. 

While I’m sitting backstage with a towel around my shoulders, having my hair manipulated by our team of rootless (hair pun) young women, you’re off in a low-lit corner, stretching. Still a slender man with exquisite wrists and ankles, ridiculously pointy knees, and hands that must have been made by a Swiss watchmaker or— 

—Wait a minute. Do you remember the time we took a boat ride down the Thames because you wanted to see the Royal Observatory in Greenwich?

It was one of the last times we were able to do something like that, just buy tickets from a booth and then wait around for a little touristy cruise without being recognized. A weekday morning, autumn, drizzly, chilly. Our fellow travelers were a half dozen older couples in sensible shoes and rain-gear, out for a jaunt. They seemed perfectly comfortable with us until they heard us speak—our Irish accents worried them. 

I suppose we could have been IRA. We were the right age; it was the right year. I in particular looked like trouble, with my tough little street urchin face. But you? Never. So gentle, Edge. You smiled at the old ladies and they smiled back through their powder and their coral lipstick. Then they glanced at me again and felt a little better. Maybe I wasn’t so much a tough urchin as a mischievous pixie. Maybe I was even cute. And the both of us wearing wedding rings, after all. 

This was long before anyone might think we were married to each other. And long before you began to look like a noble Tatar chieftain. You still had lots of coarse, dark, wavy hair, and your eyes were curious and trusting. Face as pretty and delicate as a girl’s—except for that granite cliff of a forehead. You were narrow as a reed, graceful in a way I could never be. I loved looking at you even then. Not sure if you knew. 

The boat's captain gave us a running travelogue, pointing out sites of historic interest along the river, even though a guided tour wasn’t part of the deal. He just loved his London. And the old folks loved him. Both the captain and his—associate? first mate? assistant boat-driver?—had the kinds of faces that you see all the time in pubs back home, but they had clearly been in England for generations. Real Eastenders, serious Cockneys. 

From the river, London looked like a gargantuan version of Dublin anyway. The same waterfront jumble; docks and warehouses and lifts. And then shiny new office buildings shooting up amid the squalor, brand new expensive blocks of flats, glass panes reflecting the gray river and the gray sky. Giant cranes swiveling around everywhere you looked. Just the kind of stuff my eyes liked to work on back then, well before I saw a Salvadoran village or the French Riviera.

I remember that the captain’s voice shook as he pointed out the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, damaged but unbowed during the Blitz. The captain was old enough to remember that.

You and I, Edge, were the only two passengers on the outer deck, braving the cold wind and the fine needles of rain, because young men don’t sit inside like old-age pensioners! I remember we were drinking tea from polystyrene cups, made for us in the boat’s snack bar by the second-old-fella-in-command. I remember it was strong enough to strip a layer of cells from the roof of your mouth. 

I remember that the wind had kissed roses onto your cheeks.

*

Greenwich felt more like a village than a part of London. Cobblestone streets, cafes, little shops, and trees. Loads of trees. We climbed up the steep green hill to the Observatory, just us and the old ones, huffing along, plus a few young couples with tiny children. Everyone else was at work or at school. Or on the dole somewhere, or maybe on strike, this being Thatcher’s England. At any rate, we continued to go unrecognized. I can’t remember what we thought about that then, but it seems like such a luxury to me now.

So up the hill and through the park to the Observatory itself, a surprisingly squat little brick Christmas-cake with a dome on top. We paid our admission and walked into a musty old exhibition hall, where we heard a lecture about ships’ clocks—“marine chronometers”—that had been invented by an obsessive scientific type during the eighteenth century.

This was _so_ your sort of thing, The Edge. Until then I hadn’t known how important it was to be able to keep time accurately at sea. But you understood, of course, the connection between time of day and accurate navigation, the relationship between time and space.

The clocks themselves were a treat to look at: glass bells protecting intricate inner workings. Such tiny, delicate parts, all golden, all moving in concert with one another. Spindles, axles, pins, springs, flywheels. Every tiny component perfect and beautiful on its own, but also as part of the entire works, spinning and clicking into place, never dropping a millisecond. Visual music.

That’s what I remember when I look at your hands. So perfect and so complicated. Exquisite objects that should be protected in museum glass. But instead of pins and flywheels and springs, your hands are made of fifty-four fine, tapering bones, twenty-seven in each hand. Can you imagine? What a miracle.

I’ve worshipped your hands all these years, like an idolator. The texture of the skin on your palms, your lifeline and heartline. The peaks and declivities of the knuckles. The raised vein running from your left wrist to your index finger. The color and shape of your fingernails, the cuticles and half-moons. The length of each finger. How your fingers taste. How your fingers feel in my hair, on my face, on my chest. And elsewhere.

Of course you already know all of this. Love. But back then, you were the undiscovered country.

*

Outside again, we hopped back and forth across the Prime Meridian line, snapping Polaroids of each other with a foot on either side. You regretted leaving your good camera at the hotel. You didn’t want the rain to get in it. But the Polaroids were fun: peeling the film, shaking ‘em out, stowing them in our jacket pockets. I hope you still have yours. I probably don’t have to tell you that mine are lost to the sands of time.

Then we rested on the great big hill with its postcard view of London. The rain had stopped, the light was breaking through the clouds. A line of light painted your profile. No one was looking at us, no one was asking for autographs or blessings. If I’d known how quickly all this was coming to an end… There was just one young mum, a few years older than us, who gave us a curious glance as she scooped up the toddler who’d tried to do a runner. A glance and then a little smile. Maybe she recognized us, maybe she just liked the look of us. I always remember her—Greenwich Mum. Dark-haired, pretty, and just a little bit tired-looking, the way young mums always are. I loved her for a minute. Of course I did.

We were sitting cross-legged on the wet grass like kids ourselves. Your knee was grazing mine and I wasn’t sure if you realized it or not, but I didn’t move. I waited for you to notice, to say sorry, or to slide over a couple of inches, but you didn’t. So I didn’t either. So there we were. At the top of the Greenwich Observatory hill, damp and green, sloping away forever. In the distance, a shattering view of greater London.

The clouds broke apart above the city, and you and I were parallel with the clouds. Elevated, if you will. That’s how it felt, sitting at the rim of this great bowl of light, barely touching, not moving apart.

*

And here we still are.

Together once more at the bottom of the bowl of darkness. Quite an enormous bowl this time, under a hazy nighttime sky. City lights in the distance, a siren, a helicopter. People clinging to the sides of the bowl, clamoring for us, a blur of faces and hands and phones. And every one of them so inexplicably fucking precious and dear to us. We have to work hard to reel them in, especially the ones up at the top. Make them know they’re part of this, every bit as much as the lucky people down in the pit. Me over here, you over there, Adam dispatched in the opposite direction, and even Larry strolling back and forth between two drum kits like he owns the place. Which he does, of course. 

But for me, the best part—the _best_ part—is when we’re all together again up front. Center of the universe, bottom of the bowl. And you’re walking toward me, grinning with that stupid radio mic obscuring your teeth, playing some of the most complicated guitar riffs on earth like it’s no big deal, like anyone at all could do this provided they had two functioning hands. 

And I’m walking toward you, and I can be silent for once, just smiling back. 

Not far away there’s a pair of crazy women screaming our names, yours and mine. They’ve been there all night, in that same tight spot with the camera boom swinging back and forth above their heads. Losing their shite completely, as you and I get closer and closer to one another, in this beautiful, blessed bowl of darkness.


End file.
